Pick and Pack: Introduction

Pick and Pack (aka PNP and 'scale later') is a powerful workflow feature available in ShipRush UPS Pro. To best explain, let's take a couple of steps back and think about how shipping works.

The Short Story:

To say it succinctly, Pick and Pack is "Give me the label and tracking number now, I will tell you the weight and dimensions later."

The Long Story: What is a shipment?

We aren't trying to be funny, but the answer depends who you ask...

1. In the front office, where the order is taken, a shipment is whatever it takes to create a shipping label. Once you have the label printed, you are done.

2. To the 'picker' (the picker packs the box), a shipment is a shipping label. If the order has been picked, packed, and has a shipping label on it, it is done.

3. In the mail room (or loading dock), a shipment is a box of goods waiting to get on a UPS truck.

4. To UPS, a shipment is at least three things:

• A physical box (which needs to be transported on-time and on-target)

• Information about the shipment in order to send you a bill

• Tracking information

Hence the crux of the issue: You want the label (and probably the tracking number) at step 1, but the weight (and possibly dimensions) of the shipment will not be known until step 2 or 3. Step 1 is done in an accounting or ecommerce application in the front office. Steps 2 and 3 may be done at the other end of the building, and the accounting application is not accessible out there.

Or to take that another step: At step 1, you want the tracking number (to save in the accounting or ecommerce system) and you want the label, so that a packing list and ready-to-use label can be sent to step 2. But the accounting system will not be accessible to the folks doing steps 2 and 3.

When the packages get to step 3, they can be scaled and measured.

The Sequence

The overall steps to process a Pick and Pack shipment will be:

1. Front Office PC prints the shipping label with the Scale Later option selected

2. The Mail Room/Warehouse PC will update the weight of the parcel (either manually or automatically)

3. Either PC can initiate the End of Day process.

Notes

The PC used for the last step -- updating the weight -- only needs ShipRush. It does not need to run the accounting, CRM or ecommerce 'target' or 'host' application. This PC can run ShipRush in 'stand alone' mode. No other software is needed on this PC (it doesn't even need a printer!).

A Word of Warning: Use Pick and Pack responsibly. If you ship parcels that are not updated with weights, they will not upload to UPS, and your UPS bills will probably become a problem.

Pick and Pack is for single parcel shipments only.

Next: Pick and Pack: Setup